


Kiss me (try to fix it)

by fairytalelights



Category: Vampire Diaries RPF
Genre: Angst, F/M, Happy Ending, minor Ian Somerhalder/Nikki Reed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-11 12:21:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3327017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairytalelights/pseuds/fairytalelights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kissing Nina was like fire. Sometimes it was warm and comforting, and sometimes it would burn up everything inside him until there was nothing left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kiss me (try to fix it)

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own these people and these events never happened. (Unfortunately.)

Kissing Nina was like fire. Sometimes it was warm and comforting, and sometimes it would burn up everything inside him until there was nothing left.

He always made sure to seperate himself from Damon's emotions, because Damon's head was a dark place most of the time. Ian could turn him on and off like a light switch at times, but when he was kissing Nina, the line was blurring. It was like kissing her and Elena at the same time and it didn't matter as long as he was hitting his marks and tilting his head at the right angle, because no one could really tell if you were in character or not during a kiss, but Ian knew the difference. He knew that he had started kissing her when they were Damon and Elena, but suddenly, halfway through the kiss, they became Ian and Nina again. And then someone was yelling cut and he had to get in character again to do the dialogue part and it was exhausting.

 

During the times they were together, Ian once asked her if she could feel the transition, the moment when he stopped being Damon and became Ian instead.

“I didn't even know you did that,” she answered, curled up on the sofa in his trailer, her head in his lap. “It's different for me, I don't know. I'm not really kissing you, I'm just focused on the technical stuff and things. When I want to kiss you, I do it here, where I can have you all to myself.”

Ian wanted to reply and explain it better, but then she pulled him down to her and suddenly he had better things to do.

 

Now kissing Nina was like ice. It felt cold and shivery and maybe she would melt when he touched her too roughly. There were so many things to break between them now, their friendship wasn't really one, they just both liked to lie to themselves.

Ian tried to be Damon all the time now during kisses. He tried to stay in Damon's head as long as possible, but sometimes Elena put her hands around his neck in the same way that Nina used to and he just didn't have it in him to seperate the two of them anymore.

The ice between them was burning him the same way the fire used to, but he didn't know how to stop it from spreading.

 

It got easier. He tried to do it like Nina, when she told him that camera kisses weren't really kisses for her, so long ago. And normally, he agreed, he was a professional actor, he never used tongue, always brushed his teeth before and generally considered himself to have great self control when it came to his job. But this wasn't some random girl that he was kissing, this was Nina. Nina, who loved reading on rainy days, was called Nikolina by her family (and sometimes by Ian) and who would loudly curse in Bulgarian at her burnt cookies. (Ian ate them anyway.)

He couldn't just unknow all these little details about her, it was impossible to even forget a single one of them. She stilled hummed melodys on set all the time and now it was painful instead of cute, because Ian had listened to her singing these songs everywhere she went for the past two years and he couldn't get the lyrics out of his head, even if he tried.

 

Paul started sending him concerned looks when Ian messed up during scenes where Nina was being too much Nina and not enough Elena.

Ian tried to explain it to him and Paul nodded. “It's like character bleeding, just the other way around. I know you don't want to hear it, but maybe you should move on. You know, trying to forget her.”

Ian knew that he couldn't forget her. Maybe if he didn't see her every day it would be easier, maybe then she would just fade from his life. Maybe if he didn't have to kiss her (Elena, and it was Damon that had to kiss her, not him, he tried to tell himself), maybe if she wasn't as present in his life, maybe if she wasn't like the sun and everything revolved around her, maybe then.

 

There was another possibility besides forgetting her. Replacing her. Ian tried lots of alcohol, then lots of work (which wasn't that easy, because most of the time he had to work with her) and finally, lots of sex. The only problem with having one night stands when half of the world's population knew your face, was just that even if he couldn't remember their names in the morning - they always knew his. So he gave up on that (his agent had been starting to get pissed anyway) and tried serious dating.

The girls that Paul set him up with were nice and attractive, but after the third one Ian started to notice the pattern of long dark hair and brown eyes, and he stopped listening to what they were saying and started seeing a different person in front of him instead.

So he gave up on that, too and stopped listening to Paul's advice.

 

“You are over her, right?” Candice asked him one day. It was late and almost everyone was already done for the day. “I mean... You can tell me if you aren't,” she continued, sounding almost desperate.

Ian didn't know what answer she wanted to hear, so he tried for the truth. “Yeah, of course I am,” was what came out of his mouth. There was a sharp pang in his stomach at the words, but he didn't think he was lying. He and Nina would never get back what they had, there was too much broken between them now. There was no other choice than to be over her.

Candice looked away, almost as if she was hoping for a different answer.

 

Charity events were the place to meet nice people, Ian tried to tell himself. He met Nikki in the hotel he was staying in because of the charity gala, but he still thought it counted.

 

Kissing Nikki was like warm rain on a hot summer day. It was easy and relaxing and it didn't burn him alive, it put the fire out. It didn't feel like there was something freezing and breaking between them, it felt like it could grow, if Ian let it. He was not sure he was able to let it. To give up on the possibility that there was maybe something ( _someone_ ) else, still waiting for him to fix things.

Nikki was funny and smart and kind, but where Nina was all passion, she was all smiles and gentleness. She never burnt cookies in her entire life and she didn't curse in Bulgarian. She didn't even curse in English. Her full name was Nicole. Ian never used it.

 

When the press found out about her, Ian knew that there was only one person he cared about knowing.

Candice' lips were pressed into a thin line almost the whole day after the first pictures appeared, but Nina seemed to behave normally, so Ian didn't bring the subject up.

 

“I might be in love with her.”

“You think?” Paul snorted. “I have seen that scene on the dailys. Man, you've got some issues there.”

“I'm talking about Nikki.”

“Right. So was I. Obviously.”

 

“I miss Lynx,” Ian told Nikki once when she showed him a video of a cat trying to catch snowflakes. “Who?”

“Oh, Lynx is a cat, it's actually... Never mind, not that important,” he trailed of, suddenly realizing mentioning missing his ex-girlfriend's cat probably wasn't the best idea. Nikki probably wouldn't have made it into a big deal, she wasn't the jealous type, but Ian knew it was a big deal. It really was.

 

“I love you,” Nikki whispered into his skin, told him with her words, her smiles, her touches, her heart. “I love you, too,” Ian answered. He didn't know if there was any other way for him to tell her than words.

 

Working with Nina didn't get easier. Kissing her still wasn't like usual acting kisses, like it wasn't even a kiss. It still felt real, and she still didn't feel like Elena under his hands and not even remotely like Nikki. There was just her and her overwhelming presence and it wasn't just the kissing, it was also the standing too close, it was the “I want you to be happy,” that Damon seemed to tell her over and over again in a thousand different ways, it was the way that her eyes would linger a minute to long on his face after his words, almost as if she recognized that it was Ian and not Damon saying them.

“One time you asked me what kissing you on camera was like for me. I was lying,” she told him one day. He didn't have the strength to look up and see the regret in her eyes.

 

“You're an idiot! Can't you see how much she is hurting? What the hell have you done? You could have waited a few more months, you asshole!” Candice was yelling and Ian saw her hand twitching dangerously, but he wasn't Paul, so she probably wouldn't go as far as slapping him.

“She's not hurting. I'm not hurting. We're all just living our lifes to the fullest,” Ian said. He could tell that Candice recognized his Damon tone, but she didn't call him out on it, just made an angry sound and walked off. Ian kind of wished she would have punched him or thrown stuff at him. It wasn't like he didn't deserve it.

He couldn't bring himself to look at the ring on Nikki's finger anymore, because he didn't like seeing it on someone else's hand in his head.

 

“I love you,” he tried to tell her as often as possible, with words and gestures and rings and promises of forever. Sometimes he believed himself.

 

Kissing in the rain wasn't like it was in the movies, or in their case, on tv. It was cold and wet and Ian didn't even have to think about the ice between them as a metaphor anymore. Nina was shivering and her lips were starting to turn blue and Ian wanted to do what he always did: Give her his jacket, make her a cup of tea or kiss her lips red again. The irony that he was only allowed to do the latter wasn't lost on him.

“You know, you could have waited a bit longer,” Nina said that night, between takes and he couldn't tell if it was only water on her face anymore. “You didn't have to hurt me like this!”

The rain was loud, so she had to shout to get him to listen and Ian thought that maybe she chose this moment on purpose, where he couldn't tell if it was her being emotional or if it was just the setting, if maybe the shaking of her voice was just her being cold. Maybe she chose this moment because he couldn't run away this time, but she could, she could slip back into being Elena in a second. Ian didn't know if slipping back into Damon meant escaping for him, too.

“I know,” he answered. “I'm sorry.” He wasn't sure she heard him.

 

He didn't get married. He didn't choose to flee this time, he chose to fight. He lost.

 

“Forgive me.”

“For what?”

“Choosing to run.”

“You didn't just run, you build up a whole new life around you and then you smashed it into pieces and now you expect me to pick them up. I don't think I can do that for you.”

“I'm not asking you to. Let me deal with the pieces. Just... just come back.”

“I... I need to think about this.” She didn't say no.

 

Years later Ian bought a ring for the right girl. She still didn't say no.

 

He stopped trying to compare Nina's kisses to anything. (Fireworks, stars, rainbows, _entire galaxys_. There weren't any words left.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from "Sad, Beautiful, Tragic" by Taylor Swift.  
> This is for you, Lexie <3  
> (I'm here on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/fairytalelights) and on [Tumblr](https://lookslikefairytale.tumblr.com), if you wanna say hi.)


End file.
